Leviathan Wakes

Leviathan Wakes, published in 2011, opens the Expanse series and was written by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the two American writers who publish together as James S. A. Corey. Later volumes include Caliban's War and Abaddon's Gate. It reached the 2012 Hugo and Locus Award shortlists for Best Novel. The novel was adapted for television from 2015.

The ice haulers working the outer planets have spent generations resenting Earth, and when the Canterbury answers a distress call that turns out to be a trap, its surviving officer Jim Holden sends the wrong message at the wrong moment and gives everybody a reason to shoot. Five members of the crew survive in a shuttle: Holden, the engineer Naomi Nagata, the pilot Alex Kamal, the engineer Amos Burton and the medic Shed Garvey.

On Ceres, detective Joe Miller is handed a missing-person case that his own employers would rather he dropped, and the trail runs into a corporation willing to weaponise something nobody understands. Holden and his crew, Miller and a Martian navy crew all end up chasing the same answers across the solar system, while the outer planets and Earth move closer to war. The book alternates between Holden's and Miller's points of view, so the conspiracy is seen from both ends.

The Expanse ran to nine novels, with several short stories set before, during and after the first book. Leviathan Wakes establishes the factions, the protomolecule and the two leads, and it is the opening volume of a series rather than a standalone story.